• Question: Why are our bones so strong? If they are so strong, how come they can break or be a cause of arthritis?

    Asked by 2cvenus to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 19 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 19 Jun 2012:

      Hi 2cvenus!
      Our bones are really strong considering how little they weigh. And they are also a little flexible, to stop them snapping, and mostly hollow, so we don’t have to carry lots of heavy bone around with us. Bones are constantly renewed – old bits get taken apart and new bits built up by special cells in bones that move about and fix them. As we get older, and with some illnesses, the cells that build new bone become much slower at mending, but the cells that take old bone apart don’t stop. So our bones get weaker and weaker and we run higher risks of breaking them.
      The way to stop that happening is to eat lots of healthy things to protect our bones and make them really strong while we are young – things with calcium in for example!

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